A review by nyquillll
Book Lovers by Emily Henry

adventurous emotional funny hopeful lighthearted medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? N/A
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.5

I’m really conflicted - because the core of the book, the message it tries to emit, I really loved and identified with. What I didn’t gel with as much was how the romance between the two main characters developed - it kind of happened out of nowhere to me with no real wrap up or confession of when feelings began? I couldn’t tell, though, if it was this plot point that felt off or if I don’t connect with the writing style wholly, because the ratio of dialogue to inner monologue was very skewed at times for me toward monologue and description. 

Things I liked:

• The tangential main focus of the sister relationship and the pain/grief/joy that’s wrapped up in maintaining meaningful relationships with the people closest to us as we get older and our paths start to split. 
• The covering of topics: death of a parent, non-linear grief,
  parentification of a child
  , being “wrong” for someone doesn’t mean you’re “wrong” for everyone, radical love based in wanting the best for that person but not at the expense of yourself, the importance of finding places that have enough room for you to grow rather than feeling too small to fit you, how freeing letting go (of misconceptions, ideas about who we should be or how life should look) can be, and staying true to what makes us ourselves even if others might not understand.
• The dynamic of the two main characters being in the book world itself as editor and agent. I liked the “meta” vibe it gave, almost reflective on the book industry in some parts. 
• How Charlie is written as a caring, reassuring, and supportive foil to Nora.
• Reiterating that one of my favorite themes of the book was that we can’t love other people wholly if we also aren’t filling our own cups. Unconditional love is beautiful in theory but can be overwhelming in real life. I really loved how this theme was explored with the sister dynamic. 

What I didn’t like as much: 

• The pacing of the book left much to be desired by me. The first third of the book felt incredibly slow and then all at once the two main characters like each other after some physical attraction. 
• Also, the fact that he was her “nemesis” from one meeting two years prior? I know I tend to ruminate over situations, but that one thing caused him to be a nemesis? I also kept waiting for
  Charlie to reveal he liked her ever since that first meeting
  but no
• There were quite a few references to characters and books I didn’t know or recognize. I’m guessing they might have been older romance-related things, like things popular in the 80s or something. 
• Some of the plot points felt verrrry drawn out. I feel like the book could’ve been 50-100 pages shorter and still hit on a lot of the same points. 

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Grief

Moderate: Death of parent

Quotes I highlighted:

”That’s the thing about women. There’s no good way to be one.”

"we can just...take a break from being the Tired Supermom and Fancy Career Lady we have to be the other eleven months out of the year"

"I'd trade any number of organs to cement us both into this moment, to live here always where she's shining bright."

"Look, Nora, you know I love your beautiful, Dewey-decimal-organized brain, but you date like you're shopping for cars."

"Why, of all the words available to me, is this what I said?"

"They taught me that heartbreak, like most things, was a solvable puzzle. A checklist could guide a person through mourning. There was an actionable plan for moving on."

"Got distracted by two gin martinis and a platinum blond shark who wanted me dead."

"She doesn't remember that she's gone."

"Sometimes, it feels like no mater how many years pass, when I first wake up, I'm newly orphaned."

"I'm from here, Stephens."

"Yes, but I have no problem with Nadine Winters...in fact, I find her fascinating."

"Do you like grass?" "Big fan." "We've got lots."

"I really wonder what you think your face is doing right now, Stephens."

"like the memory of her is a newspaper clipping and every time I take it out, she fades and creases a little more"

"I've been thinking." "I'll call a news crew immediately."

"Like there were emotions deep in me, but too many layers of ash lay over them, deadening them to nothing but a tectonic murmur."

"I watched my friends in relationships make compromise after compromise, shrinking into themselves until they were nothing but a piece of a whole..."

"Okay, they're just arms. Chill, Nora. Straight men have it too easy."

"I chop whatever she tells me to, then watch her rechop it to her liking."

"It makes me proud, but also sort of sad. Maybe this is how parents feel when their kids grow up, like some piece of them has become fundamentally unknowable."

"I hate when I have to think about what my face is doing, especially because I'm never convinced it's translating."

"Why is my mother texting me about how hot you are?"

"The acronym for the app is MOM? Sometimes I worry about the severe lack of warning bells in your brain, Libby."

"Consider yourself the grape juice of dates."

"She was magic."

"It's how he realized I wanted to learn how to put things together. I thought the world made sense, and I wanted to find the sense."

"He just wanted me to love something. He didn't care what."

"It feels like not just an understatement, but a complete mistranslation for something vast and unruly."

"Maybe this is why people take trips, for that feeling of your real life liquefying around you, like nothing you do will tug on any other strand of your carefully built world."

"I wasn't there, I think. They needed me and I wasn't there. Just like-"

"I think we need to see Nadine exactly as the world sees her, before the curtain gets pulled back."

"I think we might be good together, Stephens."

"Yes, together we add up to one emotionally competent human, a real accomplishment."

"People who'd never looked my way were all over me. Hardly mattered what I made. My work became a status symbol, nothing more, nothing less."

"I make no promises but I offer many doors."

"It's one thing to accept that the person I love most is fundamentally unknowable to me; it's another to accept that she doesn't quite see me either."

"...you're constantly looking for all the information, trying to make the absolute best decisions."

""Must be a pretty long list." "One item...very specific."

"Hidden there, under my rigidly manufactured sense of control and my checklists and my steel exterior, there is always fear."

"...it just seemed like the kind of place that might look one way on the outside, and be something totally different once you got to know it. Like if you had the patience to take the time to understand it, it might be something beautiful."

"And it always hurts. It's terrifying. One more person who needs you."

"Charlie, will you please be here?"

"Thank you, I mouth. His chin dips as he smiles. Anything for you, he mouths. In my chest, something heavy turns over."

"There are full series I love whose last chapter I've never read. I hate the feeling of something ending."

"This must be how people feel when their water breaks. Like they've been carrying a new future around inside themself and suddenly it's gushing out, ready or not."

"I've never felt so useless, or so grateful not to be in charge."

"Because then - and only then - I knew it was safe to come apart."

"Libby, you're not a burden. You're it. You come first." "Even before my career. And my Peloton."

"I'm being serious. Mom expected too much from you."

"...that doesn't change the fact that sometimes, she forgot whose job it was to take care of us."

"She treated you like her partner, Nora. She treated you like you were - like it was your job to take care of me. And I let you, after she died, but you're still doing it. And it's too much. For both of us."

"I eat meat."

"I'm always biased toward a shark."

"Your nightmare brain...is my absolute favorite, Stephens."

"For a decade, I've known I will never again have everything, and so all I've wanted is to believe that, someday, again, I'll have enough. The ache won't always be so bad."

"Even if it can't last. Even if we already know how it ends."

"Please don't apologize for letting me know you."

"I'll take you home whenever you want...But if you want to stay, and you wake up screaming, it's okay. I'll make sure you're okay. And if you want to stay, and then change your mind, I don't mind driving you back at four a.m."

"Bea giggles. It is, very likely, the sound that the earth made the first time it saw the sun come up."

"I get so fucking claustrophobic from it all. 'Not from them. But from feeling like I don't know how to be myself here.'"

"Believe it or not...I didn't mean perfect for Blake Carlisle. I meant, to me, you're perfect."

"Because...you've spent your life making sure she has everything she needs, and it's time someone made sure you did."

"The last-page ache. The deep breath in after you've set the book aside."

"...those days when there was nothing between us, when we belong together more than we belonged anywhere else."

"There's no less room in my heart for her than the day she first came screaming into the world. But there is less time. Less space in our daily lives."

"We're a Venn diagram now, instead of a circle."

"You're going to have the world's best guest room here...And if everything goes to shit, you'll come stay with us. I'll take care of you, okay? I'll take care of you how you've always, always taken care of me, Nora."

"...that two people, in the same hug, could both be allowed to fall apart. That maybe it's neither of our jobs to keep a steel spine."

"...and I still feel like a city person, through and through, but maybe it's possible to have more than one home. Maybe it's possible to belong in a hundred different ways to a hundred different people, and places."

"I used to try and read a book a month with him. Did it all through high school, and college too. I'd ask for recommendations - the last thing he'd read and loved, so we'd always have something to talk about, that mattered to him."

"Not the kind that forces two people into shapes they don't fit in, but the kind that loosens their grips, always leaves room to grow. Compromises that say, there will be a you-shaped space in my heart, and if your shape changes, I will adapt."

"And then, Would I like this? Because that matters too."

"You let me love you as much as I know I can, for as long as I know I can, and you have it fucking all. That's it. That's the best I could come up with, and I really fucking hope you say-"